What do women's cosmetic products have to do with S-boxes?

[Transmogrifox]

I just completed a couple LED/LDR assemblies using epoxy for strength and coating it with...

...black fingernail polish.  

It works very well.  With two coats of fingernail polish, I could hold the assembly right next to a 60 Watt light bulb and measure 17 Meg resistance on my DMM.  Attach the voltage supply through a resistor to the LED, and I got it down to 10k ohm, just to be sure the whole assembly works.

I thought some of you may get some benefit from the idea

[Peter Snowberg]

Nail polish is also good for freezing pots that you don't want people to adjust. They do look at me funny when I buy it though. hehehe

Take care,
-Peter

[AL]

Thanks for the tip.  Nail polish also makes a great clear coat for things also.  What are you going to use the LED/LDR assembly for?

Peter - I'm with you on the funny looks.  For the past 10 years or so I have been working (periodically and poorly) in my spare time as a special effects/make-up type guy.  Try buying KY Jelly, eye shadow and Castor Oil in one shot?  Man I got some looks for that one.  A few weeks ago I had to buy lipstick and eye liner.  I'm probably gonna get my butt kicked one of these days.


AL

[Peter Snowberg]

Al,

You have more guts than I.

For doing lightshows I used to buy out the drug store of mineral oil and got some funny looks from that, but KY Jelly, eye shadow and Castor Oil in one shot? Yikes! :shock:

Depending on where you made that purchase in San Francisco you might get odd looks or offers for dates.

Take care,
-Peter

[AL]

Well I can't speak for San Fransisco but .... I'm in West Virginia.  I do live in a college town so it's a little more tolerant but it always helps to have your girlfriend with you.  :oops:

AL

[Transmogrifox]

Yeah, it sure feels funny being the only straight man walking through a women's cosmetics aisle.

I have tried the clear coat thing as well.  Works great.

Thanks for the tip. Nail polish also makes a great clear coat for things also. What are you going to use the LED/LDR assembly for?

Proximity-Modulated 4rth-order phase-wah.  I have the first 2nd order stage on my breadboard right now, and found that it sounds good when I use it simultaneously with another wah pedal.  My LED/LDR assemblies in the first stage are a ball of epoxy, paper and electrical tape....very professional :wink: .

[AL]

Wow that sounds ... like a tounge twister ... and really interesting.  If you don't mind me asking where did you get the idea for that one?

AL

[Transmogrifox]

It evolved out of my "Blue Zebu" mod to the crybaby (originally refered to as Haw-waH in previous posts  www.geocities.com/transmogrifox/haha )

I found the cool notchy phasey effect of the "Blue Zebu" using the regular 2nd wah filter was kinda mellow, and not a "jump out and bite the audience with sharp teeth" effect.  It's good in it's own right...

however, I did this Blue Zebu mod to my Bad Horsie and put my proximity wah in front of the pedal so I could modulate both simultaneously with my foot, and when I did it right, I got a very "vocal" phasor sound...but it was still distinctively wah like...so that's why it's phase-wah.  A 4th order filter has enough phase response to generate an very interesting "phaser" sound in its own right.  The idea here is that I'm creating a notch filter, then correcting it with a bandpass wah at the expense of some phase.  I'll probably mix the dry signal back in at the end to see if I can get some more phase cancellation nulls.

so there's the story of why I'm using women's cosmetics in conjunction with my stomp box fetish...

[Peter Snowberg]

That looks really interesting. Do you have any sound samples in the works?

Take care,
-peter

[AL]

Hey now that IS interesting!!!  Did you build this into your wah?  Or did you use a seperate box?

AL

[Transmogrifox]

I built the Blue Zebu into both my Dunlop Crybaby (which is for sale on eBay, by the way) and my Bad Horsie (also with an enevelope follower for the BH, too), but I haven't combined the Blue Zebu with the proximity wah (for the 4th order effect) into one circuit yet.  So far, it takes some creative balance and foot-work to modulate them together, but I'm hoping to get a chance to actually build the thing soon.  I have no idea when I can produce audio samples, but the day I do, it will be a whole slough of them at once.

...For the modded Bad Horsie, I have a plan to have some brass plates custom engraved and perhaps a nice brass pot-knob (engraved) and see if I can't get $350 out of it or so...Maybe I should just take the time to convert it to "True Bypass" with a relay for the whole marketability pitch.

[Chris S]

I can I put in a second request for a sound sample of the Haw-Waw.  

[ExpAnonColin]

Me too, me too.  And...  how are you keeping the 2 together, does the black nail polish have that much substance?

[zeppenwolf]

...black fingernail polish.  

It works very well.  With two coats of fingernail polish, I could hold the assembly right next to a 60 Watt light bulb and measure 17 Meg resistance on my DMM.

Ditto, except I used a water based black enamel paint (art store kind of stuff).  Very nice to use water in brush-cleaning, and of course avoids that smell from h*ll.

Hate epoxy too.  Before applying paint, I filed the top of the LED's down to a flat surface, which was just the exact correct size to match the LDR, then glued them together with 99¢ store super glue.  For those of you who have found "superglue" to be quite disappointing: I agree!  But in this case it works perfectly; perhaps the only time I've ever really gotten great results with that junk.

"What do women's cosmetic products have [in common] with S-boxes?"

They are both unneeded by some, and when used to excess or without a refined sense of aesthetic can easily be more annoying than pleasing.

Eden

[Transmogrifox]

Me too, me too.  And...  how are you keeping the 2 together, does the black nail polish have that much substance?

You have to glue them first (as stated by Eden above).  I use Epoxy, he uses super glue.  I imagine any good glue like Gorilla glue or crazy glue is good.